Welcome to the month of March and in-person schooling. We are so grateful to have had a great week of learning with your children. There are so many wonderful things your children can tell you about this week. Students in third grade set off rockets into far away galaxies and first graders explored desert habitats which is one of my favorite topics, having grown up in Arizona. Read "Ask Your Expert," to find out more.

Staff had the opportunity to learn this week too! MSES explored learning opportunities with Poetry Heals. Poetry Heals provides therapeutic writing for essential workers, and included our staff in a wonderful workshop. Find out more at poetryheals.org.

Thank you to Parent Advisory Committee for providing staff a great lunch from the Keg this week; it was delicious. Thank you also to Colorado Ballet and Manitou Springs Arts Academy for helping us bring movement into our classrooms via their video series!

Manitou Springs School District 14 is partnering together with Pikes Peak Library District to restore our beloved Manitou Springs Carnegie Library. Keep reading to find out more about our local library.

As always, thank you for sharing your children with us. Have a wonderful weekend!

FuelED families:

There is still time to register your child for one of our virtual Connect14 classes! Info and links below. Make sure to check our Manitou Springs Elementary Facebook page and the district website weekly! Keep reading our weekly newsletters to stay on top of important updates and happenings at MSES.

Class Picture Day was moved to March 30th and we still plan to have photos taken outdoors. If your student has not had their photo taken this school year, you may bring your child to the library lawn between 3:15 pm and 4:00 pm that day.

Google Meets with MSES Teachers: Classroom teachers are continuing their Google Meet connections every other week. Please look for communication from your child's MSES grade level teacher about this in-person learner to FuelED student connection time.

Counseling Google Meets: Contact the MSES counselor, Ashley Root, about any student or family needs. (aroot@mssd14.org)

Kindergarten, 1st & 2nd Grade lunch bunch discussion group, 3/3 and 3/17 from 11am-12pm.

3rd, 4th & 5th Grade lunch bunch discussion group, 3/10 and 3/31 from 11am-12pm.

Manitou Springs School District 14 is partnering together with Pikes Peak Library District to restore our beloved Manitou Springs Carnegie Library in order to make it, once again, a center of knowledge and life-long learning for all of our Manitou Springs community.

We want this wonderful landmark to remain a symbol of Manitou Springs’ past, present, and future so that all individuals have a place to learn and enrich their lives. This, of course, includes all students, parents, and staff of D14!

If you want to find out more about this important library project search for the "Save Our Manitou Carnegie Library" Facebook page and follow on Instagram by using this same title. You can also contact the members of the team at preserveMScarnegie@gmail.com. They would want to hear from you!

MSES and FuelEd families:

Connect 14 has two classes available for your students online starting this week! There is still time to register your child for the following classes:

Virtual Robotics, grades K - 3rd, on Tuesdays with Ms. Marquardt; 3:30 - 4:30 pm

(4th/5th grade mentor spots also available)

Virtual Gardening, grades K-5, on Thursdays with Ms. Laura and Ms. Jessica; 3:30 - 4:30 pm

Please register now at www.connect14.org. There are only a few spots available at this time and all classes are online.

If your family needs scholarship support, please reach out to Joye Levy at jlevy@mssd14.org for a scholarship code!

This year's yearbook is being sent to the printers! This is the last chance to guarantee your student's yearbook. Price is $24.00 for a full color yearbook. You can use the order form attached below to pay with cash/check, or order online.

To order with debit/credit card, please go to:

https://ybpay.lifetouch.com/

Enter School ID: 9518221 or search for our school.

Once they are all sold, no more will be printed. Get yours now! Yearbooks will be delivered at the end of April.

A few weeks ago we introduced our new Health Tech, Malissa Burnell (right). We are excited to also welcome our new School Nurse, Kimberly Nowland (left):

I am honored to work with you, the familiar and friendly faces that make this school a community. My daughter is a third grader and loves MSES! I have been a school nurse for over 10 years. My other job is teaching trauma-informed mindfulness and yoga to incarcerated youth in El Paso County. I am hoping to carry on the tradition of health and safety to the Health Office at MSES, and also to bring warmth, empowerment, and a sense of safety to those who visit and/or interface with our fabulous health office. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.

Read about what's happening in our grade-level and exploratory classes at MSES!

Preschool: In the afternoon class we had Luca the bear visit and talk to us about how animals protect themselves. Ask your expert: How do some animals protect themselves in the snow and cold? (They have a fur coat.) In Dinosaur School, we finished our Feelings section and practiced naming different feelings and giving our friends and teachers compliments. Ask your expert what compliment they can give you!
jlavigne@mssd14.org

Kindergarten: Kindergarten is in the middle of learning about Columbus and the Pilgrims. We spent the day on Tuesday celebrating the author Dr. Suess. Ask your expert: What was your favorite Dr. Suess book? (Answers will vary. We read several books like “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”, “Oh the Thinks you can Think”, “The Cat in the Hat”, and “Green Eggs and Ham”.) What is a word you could use to describe The Cat in the Hat? (Mischievous, naughty, silly, funny, etc.) If the Cat in the Hat came to your house and played his tricks, would you tell your parents? Why or why not? (Answers will vary.)

1st Grade: This week, first graders started a new domain called Animals and Habitats! We learned about what a habitat is, the animals of the arctic habitat, and the animals of the Sonoran Desert habitat. Ask your expert: What is a habitat? (A place that has food, water, and shelter for a living thing.) Describe the arctic tundra. (Cold, windy, no trees, frozen/icy ground in winter, wet and muddy in summer.) What are some of the ways that arctic animals like walruses, seals, and polar bears have adapted to living in the arctic? (Fur coats, layers of blubber, long tusks, small ears and tail, sharp claws, webbed paws.) How do animals find shelter in the desert? (Underground or in holes they make in plants like the saguaro cactus.)

2nd Grade: This week we learned about the plant and tree life cycles! Ask your expert: When does the cycle begin for both? (Seed.) What happens to the seed? (Germinates or sprouts out of the seed coat.) After germination what happens next? (The sprout moves toward the sun and makes a bud that will flower.) What has to happen for a plant to make another flower? (The flower has to be pollinated.) How can pollination occur? (Bees/butterflies, animals, people, wind, and water.) What happens after the flower dies? (Its seeds are dispersed and the cycle begins again.) How are trees different from plants? (Trees can flower and bear fruit with seeds inside or they produce cones or nuts.) What do you call a young tree? (Sapling.) How can you tell the difference between a sapling and a mature tree? (Saplings are flexible and can bend.) How are seeds dispersed from a tree’s fruit, cones, or nuts? (They can fall to the ground and eventually break down and the seeds go into the soil or animals eat the fruit and eliminate the seeds through their excretory system….feces!) What is photosynthesis? (How plants make food using the sun, soil, water, and their leaves.) Why are trees essential to life on Earth? (Trees take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen for us to breathe and live.)

3rd Grade: Blast off! Third graders are learning all about space travel, from the first satellite launched in 1957 (Sputnik1), to the first living being in space (a dog named Laika), to the first human being in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin (aboard Vostok 1, in 1961). The next question, can we land on the moon? Yes!! In 1969 the United States sent 3 astronauts into space (Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin). Ask your expert what Neil Armstrong said when he walked on the moon July 20, 1969? (“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”) As we learn more about space missions, students should be able to tell you all about Dr. Mae Jemison, and there is a lot to tell! (Graduated high school when she was 16, went to college at Stanford University, became a chemical engineer, went to medical school, became a biomedical engineer, worked for the Peace Corps, then applied to be an astronaut for NASA!) Dr. Mae Jemison was the first African-American woman to go into space, in 1992, on the space shuttle Endeavour. Ask your expert about other space shuttle missions, and what ISS stands for (International Space Station). Be sure to check out Perseverance landing on Mars last week!

4th Grade: Fourth graders have started to wrap up their Geology domain and are writing their first informational five-paragraph essay, detailing the differences between the three rock types: Igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock! Ask your expert: Which rock type do you think is the most interesting and why? We have also begun our exciting next domain, "Eureka! Student Inventor". Eureka is an invention-themed “game show” in which students are divided into lab groups and competing in challenges to complete their lab’s “Wheel of Invention” and learn about what it takes to become an inventor! Ask your expert: What is an invention? (An invention is an object or process that a person makes that is new and different and was created to do something.) Is a pencil an invention? What about a tree? Why or why not?

5th Grade: Fifth graders are still working on our Renaissance unit in CKLA. This week we learned about women in the time of the renaissance! We focused on Isabella d’Este, Sofanisba Anguissola, and Lavinia Fontana. Ask your expert: How did these three women differ from most women during the Renaissance period? (They were famous painters, started schools for girls to be educated, ruled over city-state.) How were women generally expected to behave at this time? (Marry well, have children - especially sons, take care of the home.)

Art: After learning and practicing how to draw basic shapes as three-dimensional forms, fourth grade artists created three-dimensional cakes and cupcakes rendered with colorful values that accentuate the depth of their delicious designs! Fifth grade artists are creating two compositions that demonstrate their use and understanding of drawing geometric and organic shapes using one-point perspective.

cdunlap@mssd14.org

Spanish:

The second graders finished unit # 5 of our curriculum, "Soy listo"/“ I am smart”

Vocabulary: yo soy/ I am, listo/smart, pequeño/little, ¿Quién?/who, amigo/friend, yo/ I, pero/but. In enrichment, they learned about clothes. Vocabulary: chaqueta/jacket, zapatos/shoes, medias/socks, pantalón/pants, falda/skirt, vestido/dress, pantalones cortos/shorts. In the cultural class they learned about the dance "La Cumbia de Colombia."

alillemon@mssd14.org

Music: In Music this week, kindergartners learned about Chuck Berry, Funk/Early R&B, Hip Hop, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder. They also recorded their original work song, and we’re eager to share that with parents!

elawson@mssd14.org

PE: Greetings everyone. We have finished up our volleyball unit with 1st graders and will be finishing out the week with more throwing,catching,and team building activities by using a variety of activity equipment.

rniebuhr@mssd14.org

TEAMS:

Third graders are about to dive into their Native American CKLA domain. In TEAMS class third graders designed a longhouse and a teepee on a program called Tinkercad. The students had to be precise with the measurements in order for the model to print correctly on the 3-D printer. The students also continued their daily keyboarding practice to reach their goal of fifteen words per minute with 80% accuracy. Feel free to have your exper show you the Tinkercad program themselves. Click on the link below and have them type in their teacher code.

https://www.tinkercad.com/login

Leonardo: 99A9ZMLWCJUT

Elms: JZFNNVVRMGCL

Wood: V5YVI8U79NZE

Reading/Math Intervention:

Ms. Elms' class started their journey into space by launching their own rockets! Students colored and designed their rocket, then taped it onto a film canister. Students added water and alka-seltzer tablets into the canister, and blast off!

Ms. Romano hosted a popsicle stick building challenge and we are so impressed with the creations our students brought in this week! Take a look at the pictures below of some of our amazing structures. We will be featuring close-ups some of the more detailed buildings in next week's newsletter as well.

Fifth grade has been studying chemical vs. physical changes in science! On Friday, Ms. Embery’s class made chemical changes - slimy ones! If you have a fifth grader ask him/her what the difference is between a chemical and physical change.

Lasagna Love is a program that offers a free lasagna dinner to families in need! Whether it's because a family has some food insecurities, or that life has just been flipped upside-down and cooking a meal is the last thing someone is able to think about or do - anyone can sign up to receive a meal. If you are interested in sponsoring a lasagna chef or volunteer to cook lasagna for families in need, or if your family could use a hand with dinner one night in the coming weeks - go to the Lasagna Love website to find out more!

• Mar 12 - End of Quarter 3
• Mar 22 - 26 - Spring Break
• Mar 30 - Class Picture Day
• April 7 - Asychronous Learning Day/No students at school - Staff Work Day
• April 26 - 30 - MSES Book Fair
  

We ask that everyone continue to use the MSSD14 COVID Intake Form. This form is used only for students and staff who are absent due to unexplained or unexpected illness. This new process allows us to have consistent communication with staff and parents, which ultimately contributes to a stronger contact tracing process and the continuation of in-person learning.

Breakfast and Lunch Menus

Our amazing Parent Action Committee partnered with local family-owned restaurant, The Keg, to provide a delicious grab-and-go luncheon for our teachers and staff on Wednesday! Please support the PAC by participating in the grocery rewards program (details below). A huge thank you to owners and staff at The Keg for preparing and delivering 63 delicious meals!